


York, the King of the North

by acetamide



Category: Paris Burning (thecitysmith)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Gen, Paris Burning, Personification, York - Character, thecitysmith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-11 08:23:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1170841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acetamide/pseuds/acetamide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>York is millennia in the making.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Paris Burning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/825130) by [thecitysmith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecitysmith/pseuds/thecitysmith). 



York is millennia is the making.

The first death is an old woman, the matriarch of her family – she has had a long life, a good life, and her family has finally found a place to call home. The settlement that they had previously lived in had rejected the farming revolution that the strangers had brought with them, spurned their ideas for growing their own food instead of spending every hour of light hunting and gathering.

So they leave to find a new home, one where they don’t have to move around constantly. They travel for days, weeks, months through the thawing snow and ice until they finally stop; not because they have found a suitable place, but because they are simply too tired to continue. They sleep under animal skins and the stars whilst the father polishes his tools and watches.

The next morning, with the full light of day bursting through the clouds, they can see the two rivers that meet in the distance, wide and brown and rolling, the flat lands that stretch further than they can see. They walk the remaining distance to the rivers and she smiles at her family.

Her death comes years later, peaceful and content, surrounded by children and crops and firm in the belief that her people will live here for years to come. He takes up her last breath and with it expands once and then stills, waiting.

The second death comes quickly enough. He stirs deep in the ground as the baby cries, and then stirs again as the whole community cries along with it for the lost mother. His heart tries to beat but stutters, not ready yet, not strong enough for what is to pass. 

But the third death doesn’t come. Instead, the people are too quick, too clever, and they flee when the rivers roar across the land and the floodplains succumb to nature and they leave him beneath the ground, part-formed and shivering and alone. Waiting for something that he didn’t know. Waiting for life and death and a final stand.

And so he lingers in the ground, biding his time as the years rumble past. People come, stay for a while, and move on. Nobody calls him _sanctuary_ , calls him _safe_. He knows, even though he doesn’t know anything at all, that it will come. 

He knows with a mind that hasn’t yet formed that he will see far more than just one death, that he will see the slaughter of millions. So he waits patiently as the decades slide in centuries, as people walk past him but never stop, and he waits for the thunder of marching feet on his ground.

And then the Romans come, and he rises.

**

They are starting construction on the fortress when he opens his eyes where the rivers meet, dirt and grass stuck in the crook of his elbow and the bend of his knee and his body half-submerged in the water. His joints and muscles feel sore, stagnated, from where he’s been waiting curled up for so long, but he pulls himself to his feet and takes the time to look around – at the flat lands, the marshes and the yew trees, the water running fast and filthy.

One of the scouts notices him before he even realises that he’s not alone. It’s his first true experience of hostility (more than the feeling of the Brigantes defending their homeland, more than the men who came to take it from them) – the soldier calls out to him and he steps towards him, unthinking and smiling, reaching out to the first person that he’s ever seen. But his enthusiasm is met with fear and anger and suddenly there’s a gladius shoved under his neck, point pricking through his skin, and he doesn’t have time to think. There’s just a heavy, heady _boom- **boom**_ in his head and a flash of green and blue around his wrists and the soldier is on his back on the floor with a strong hand around his neck, choking up into a pair of vicious eyes.

Other infantry pull him away from the soldier, firmly but not painfully – one of them, then, has realised what he is. They talk to him, calm him and appease him, and take him to their commander, a general named Quintus Petillius Cerialis, who looks at him for a long time as his men fetch clothes for him.

“So you are Eboracum,” he says eventually after the longest appraisal that makes him shiver, even after he’s dressed in the tunic that’s offered to him. 

“Yes,” he says, and the word feels strange in his mouth. It’s his first word, the first of many, but even as he says it he’s not sure that it’s true. The name feels strange to him. It resonates with him, somewhere deep in his aching ( _marching_ ) feet, but his hands call him something else. His head answers to yet another name.

But for now, he will be Eboracum.

**

He sleeps, that first night – surrounded by men who live within his bounds but will never belong here, who instead long to be back in Cities with dark hair and piercing eyes – he sleeps, and he dreams.

He dreams of a warhammer heavy in his hand, and of a woman with wild hair rolling in bed with him. He dreams of a young girl’s body drifting down the river towards him, blood seeping from open burns on the backs of her arms, and he dreams of longships.

He dreams of a short woman with blonde hair marching towards him, men at her flanks and a cold fury in her eyes, demanding him surrender what is rightfully hers. He dreams of roses and a man with the body of an athlete, and he dreams of vaulted ceilings and long, long walls running the whole length of him.

He dreams of cobbled streets and women wearing huge hats, of sweet-tasting brown liquid that runs through his veins. He dreams of affirmations whispered, murmured, cried up to the highest of highs, and a man hiding deep in the bowels of a large building, plotting its destruction.

He doesn’t dream of fire. Instead, Eboracum dreams of water.

**

 

(tbc)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Romans name him the Capital of the North.

 

**

 

The Romans make Eboracum strong. They give him structure and foundation and commerce, and in turn they bring him _people_. He walks along the wall and runs his hands across the palisades, watching the soldiers on patrol outside the fortress. He stands sometimes just north of the principia, in a small section of unfilled space, and when he closes his eyes the coloured glass above him that hasn’t yet been made glints in the sunlight.

He grows, slowly but surely, his heart swelling as people come to him and settle just on the other side of the main river. Not long after they first arrived they remake him, taking down the wood (the wood that can burn, the wood that makes him weak) and replacing it with stone, and his arms and thighs thicken in response.

After their initial aggressive meeting, the soldiers warm to him; for the most part, they view his existence as proof that their settlement will be a city to last the ages. So Eboracum accepts their generosity and dines with Quintus Cerialis often on boar and wine, and doesn’t say anything about his soul answering to a different name.

But the people that come to settle are wary of him, at first. He hears them whisper in the streets as they pass him, _he looks different_ , they say, _look at his eyes_. Eboracum doesn’t know what the Italian Cities look like, but he knows that they must be a finer sight to look upon. He himself is built like a warrior – he is built to stand his ground and take punishment, and he dreads to think what this means for his people. He asks a young girl once where she comes from, and what her City looks like – she tells him that Catania is fierce and lithe and beautiful, with dark hair and dark eyes. And the people ignore that her hands are always shaking because when they look in her eyes, all they feel is love.

But he makes his home on the other side of the river from the castra and settles into their lifestyle, and he helps with the crops and raising the livestock. He tries his hand at several trades but he doesn’t have the skill to work the kilns, his hands are too big and clumsy for the glass or jet that they produce (although he does manage to create a ring and press a jet into the centre of it, and it fits snugly onto his little finger). The only work that he excels in is the metalwork, as the ever-growing strength in his shoulders pounds at hot metal with a heavy hammer and moulds it beneath his hands.

The people respect him, even if they do not quite embrace him. They worship him along with their own gods, alongside War and Fortune and Strength and the Mother Goddess. Perhaps the Cities that they knew back across the sea were more aloof, more detached, but they seem surprised by his involvement with the sustaining and developing of his own city. Perhaps it’s because they are already established Cities and aren’t as invested in creating their own futures as he is.

Eboracum knows that these people are not truly his. They are torn between him and their birth cities, and he can feel the water creeping in.

**

His first Emperor dies in 211AD, and he feels it like a punch in the gut. Plenty of his people have died since the Romans first took over but he normally like small stings, like insect bites, only between his joints instead of on his skin. But when Severus returns from his failing campaign in Caledonia and his health fails to improve, Eboracum is invited into the Emperor’s chambers as he passes on his final words of advice to his sons – _“be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men”_. As he takes his last breath, Eboracum sees Caracalla look sideways at his younger brother, and falls to the floor with the ferocity of the emotion.

The people burn Severus, in a massive cremation ceremony with the soldiers throwing gifts and the civilians wailing with sorrow, and Eboracum avoiding them all.

Caracalla assassinates his brother before the next winter is through. This death doesn’t hurt as much, but the systematic purge of all of Geta’s followers from the city has Eboracum washing blood from the palms of his hands for weeks afterward.

**

They make him a colonia; they name him the Capital of the North.

Something deep stirs in him at the proclamation. An image of a woman, small and golden-haired and shining, full of love for her people and her rulers and her vision of the future. He watches her with her people, who adore her in the way that only an established society loves their City, watches her bends to kiss the head of a child, watches her hold hands with a woman outlined in a deep glowing red.

But then she turns to look at him and he is met with the full force of her fury, and his hands twitch, searching for something to grip. She’s appeared in his dreams before but in his short century as being conscious, he has yet to meet any other Cities, too busy instead with adjusting to life. But he knows without doubt that she is a City, one that is (or will be, or once was – his dreams are from all of time) immensely powerful. He doesn’t know who she is but she looks at him with hatred and resentment and in the fire of her eyes, he hears her say, _It is mine. You cannot have it, and I will not share._

He wakes with a start and a hammer held fast in his hand and drums, raw and low and deeper than humans could ever go, thundering in his head.

**

Eboracum takes to carrying the hammer with him. The drums fade into a throbbing at the back of his mind in time with his heartbeat soon enough, but the threat stays with him. His people ask him why he carries it and he tells them that as a metalsmith, it makes sense to him to have his tool with him at all times. If they disbelieve him, they say nothing – he muses that they probably just think it some strange City habit.

He asks the people that live on his street if they recognise her, if they have perhaps travelled through her city or heard stories. The majority haven’t, say that most of the Cities hide when the Romans arrive. But the old man who owns a leatherworking shop just two roads over from his says that he knows who he’s talking about – he saw her as he travelled up from his ship when it made port at Dubrae. Most of the Cities hid, he agrees, but this one didn’t. Instead she stands proud as they pass her, with a stronger bearing than most Cities that he’s ever seen, and a determined set to her jaw.

He says that her name is Londinium.

**

It takes weeks for the drumming to fade when he is told that Britannia Inferior has been split in two, and Lindum has been declared a Capital. When he picks up his hammer to work on the armour and weaponry that litters his forge, he finds that it has grown in his hand.

**

A few decades later, a young man walks through one of the gates, and Eboracum falls in love with him immediately.

He knows before meeting him that he must be important – the new General comes to him in his forge and specifically requests his presence, asking that he may introduce him to guests arriving at the northern gate. So he walks across the bridge with his guard, hammer banging gently against his thigh, cleaning his hands with a cloth, more than aware of his current remarkably grubby appearance.

The procession itself is both lavish and practical; Eboracum’s initial assumption is a new Emperor, and it proves right, as the General brings him forward and introduces his City to Marcus Flavius Valerius Constantius Herculius Caesar, the man who claims that he will conquer Caledonia as Severus had failed to do.

But it is his son who captures Eboracum’s attention. He is tall, in his early thirties, with brown hair and serious eyes and particularly regal bearing. It’s not in his beauty though that Eboracum finds himself entranced but his _potential_ – he can see that this man is not only utterly beloved of his men but that he will take that love and turn it into pure greatness.

This man will rule an Empire larger than Severus could ever have imagined.

**

It takes less than a month for Eboracum to find his way into Constantine’s bed.

It’s less of a seduction and more of a negotiation; Eboracum is utterly captivated by the man, and Constantine recognises the significance of having a City support him. But at the same time, Eboracum knows that having an Emperor in his bed strengthens his claim to his Capitalhood, and Constantine enjoys the company that is offered to him.

He comes and goes on brief campaigns to Caledonia, and whenever he returns, they discuss the progress against the Picts and the development of the city over venison and ale, and when they are both full and exhausted of conversation, fall into bed and exhaust themselves further.

The forays to the north get longer and the returns shorter as the autumn advances, until they stop coming back to the city, instead pressing further through the country. Eboracum returns to his smithing and waits as the winter draws in, waiting for their return and to sleep in a warm bed again.

They don’t return until the nearly the Ides of Ianuarius, and with it bring victory over the Picts. The celebrations last for days.

**

Caesar plans to resume his campaign but instead, Eboracum watches as ill health befalls him and his resolve crumbles. Constantine becomes distant; he spends more and more time with his father and though it frustrates Eboracum, he doesn’t dispute it. The physicians are brought in from all across the province, from Brittania Superior and across the sea from Belgica and even as far as Germania.

The months pass and nothing happens. Eboracum begins to dread the death that he knows is coming; this Emperor is equally as beloved by the soldiers as Severus was, if not more, and the grief will be immense when it comes. It doesn’t help that Constantine pulls away from him completely, immersing himself first in attempts to heal his father and then in the processes to continue his work following his death. Eboracum misses his fiercely and mourns the loss of their relationship, and the city itself feels his bad mood, the streets contracting around him.

Caesar finally dies in July and going against all the rules laid out before him, appoints Constantine as Emperor. Eboracum watches with satisfaction as the whole of Britannia and Gaul accepts his rule with acclamation, and after a brief disagreement with Rome, Constantine is granted the title of Caesar.

He leaves the city within a year. Eboracum knows that he will never see him again and grieves appropriately for a lost love, but then rejoices in the knowledge that by the time that he dies, thousands and thousands of miles away in Nicomedia, he will be known as Constantine the Great.

**

One morning, as the snow settles gently on the ground outside and the city begins to stir, Eboracum wakes to the sound of water, and his feet are tinted green.

He can only stare in horror as the colour slowly seeps up his skin. He scrambles to his feet, to his washbasin, and tries frantically to scrub away the discolouration with an old rag but it doesn’t work. He knew that it wouldn’t, even when he started, but acknowledging the stain means acknowledging what is about to happen.

He has a choice, here. He can go to the General and tell him what’s coming, and the people will flee and he will be abandoned, devoid of people and desperate and armed with only a hammer, or he can keep quiet. He can take himself and his people into the water with him, pull them into his rivers and drown them in the depths. He is a Capital after all, and though his hold on the title might be relatively new and shaky, he is confident that he would rise again from the silt and sludge.

He steps outside his front door and turns right, trudging through the snow and dodging squealing children as they play. He stops just before the bridge, and looks around. From here he can see the majority of the city – the amphitheatre rising above the buildings to the south-west, the forum out in the open fields across to the east, just this side of the Foss. Rows upon rows of neat barracks, and the messier sprawl of houses stacked up in the colonia.

This is where he will decide what sort of City he will be. Will he be like Pompeii, condemning the city to die, refusing to allow them to find sanctuary elsewhere? Will he be kind and sacrifice himself for them instead, his streets laid empty until the next band of settlers arrive and rebuild his walls?

The water rushes beneath him, fast and deep and rising.

They were never really his people.

 

**


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He learns about Sheffield as he walks down the empty streets, the garrison having been abandoned as the Romans moved south not long after Eboracum evacuated his own city.

**

 

 

He drifts into wakefulness with a series of gentle bumps against his chest – and then comes fully alert with a shout of anger as a suddenly hard and painful kick knocks him onto his back.

He comes up to standing in a whirl, teeth bared and heart pounding and hammer swinging and the man who kicked him just… looks at him. With utter disdain and a slight sneer, shading his eyes from the piercing winter light.

“Put that thing down,” the man says flatly, looking decidedly unimpressed, and all of the fight goes out of Eboracum. He takes a few heavy breaths and lowers his arm, staring at this man, who returns his gaze with the air of someone dealing with a particularly recalcitrant child.

“I’m...” he begins, then trails off, at a loss for words. He shakes his head, and tries again. “I’m-”

“Currently loitering on one of the main roads to the city, in a prime position to be attacked by robbers, which makes you something of an idiot.”

“I am Eboracum!” he exclaims eventually, and a little indignantly, drawing himself up to his full height. “I am the Capital of the North!”

“I’m Sheffield, and I don’t give a shit – there’s four Capitals right now, I’m not picking sides. Now are you coming into the city, or not? I’ll happily leave you to the bandits if you want.”

 **

He spends a long time with Sheffield before moving on. He learns that the other City doesn’t speak much, and when he does, he is dry and to the point. But he has his own hammer that does the talking for him, and he teaches Eboracum new smithing techniques; though Eboracum doesn’t quite listen and makes the methods his own and tweaks them ever so slightly until finally Sheffield snaps.

“You’re going to end up bashing somebody’s head in with that,” he growls, and pushes Eboracum into the quenching tank.

He learns about Sheffield as he walks down the empty streets, the garrison having been abandoned as the Romans moved south not long after Eboracum evacuated his own city. Sheffield tells him that his dreams are full of metal, shining and stretching as far as he can see. There are a few other images that filter down through his consciousness but there is nothing that can penetrate the wall of metal, wrapped around him, all-encompassing.

When Sheffield notices his ring, glinting darkly, he scowls and grabs Eboracum’s finger, yanking the metal from him. He doesn’t dare protest but instead watches as Sheffield forges a new ring, taking it across to his workbench after quenching it and engraving tiny, perfect trails around the edge of it before setting the jet stone back into its centre.

Eventually he leaves and heads east, following the Roman roads and the drums that have been growing stronger as he goes further from his drowned lands.

**

When he finally arrives, after days of slow trudging on the mare that he buys just outside Sheffield, he is too tired to do anything but find the nearest baths and sink into the waters of the caldarium. He catches some of the young men staring at his sickly-green legs as he strips off his clothes, but silences them with a look and a vicious smile, daring them to make a comment.

The inn a few streets to the west is clean and comfortable, but the people still watch him carefully. The population here has yet to dwindle like Sheffield’s, though he can see the signs of a fading people already. They look on edge, ready to fight or flee at a moment’s notice. He pays the innkeeper an extra few coins to aid a good night’s rest.

He wakes in the morning to drums. He washes slowly, takes his time in dressing, checks and then double-checks the leather grip on his hammer. It’s midsummer, and the sun is warm on his face as he walks through the streets towards the praetorium, where the innkeeper tells him that he will find the City.

He passes temples on his way to Apollo and Hermes, and it makes him smile. The people of the city pay homage to truth and light, to music and healing, to travellers and thieves. In Eboracum, the people worshipped Zeus and Ares, and in doing so fortified their City and made him strong, with legs as thick as trees and a broad back to withstand any hardship.

Lindum, when he finds him, is entirely unremarkable. He is in the uniform of a tesserarius, but his features set him aside from the soldiers talking to him – light brown hair and bright blue eyes and freckles all across his nose, making him look far too young.

He stops talking to the men as soon as he sees Eboracum coming towards him, hefting his hammer in his hand, swinging it lazily as he approaches. The men around them fall silent; it’s not often that humans will see a battle in a War being played out, and Eboracum could have easily had Lindum meet him in a deserted forest glade somewhere, but he wants this to be public. He wants the humans to know.

“You understand, don’t you?” he says, and Lindum nods slowly, unsheathing his gladius and holding it out before himself, but his grip is wrong. The blade isn’t balanced in his hand. This will be easy.

“I had hoped that perhaps Londinium would come for you first,” he replies, his voice shaking. “But I heard the drums when you passed through the city gates yesterday.”

Eboracum adjusts his grip, and sees Lindum do the same, but his palms are sweating and he nearly drops his weapon.

“I am the King in the North,” Eboracum says, and the lines wrap around his hands, green and blue and green and blue, and he swings his hammer.

**

Nottingham is waiting for him at the city gates as he arrives, half-asleep in his saddle, eyes nearly closed, and blood burnt into his skin.

“I didn’t burn him,” he sighs as Nottingham wipes a warm cloth across his shoulders, and twists to meet her eyes, emerald in the firelight. “I didn’t want to destroy him, just… make a point.”

“And make it you have,” she says mildly, washing the cloth through in a bowl of pink water. “Word has been spread that you’ve stepped into the War properly. I’ll warn you, the others will come for you, eventually.”

“Not if I get to them first.”

“So you’re going after them? One by one destroying your brothers and sisters until you’re the last one standing?”

“Yes,” he says stubbornly, and closes his eyes. “I’m the King in the North.”

“So you keep saying,” she smiles. “But Londinium is not in the North. She won’t be beaten easily. She will not bow to you, I can guarantee that.”

“I know, she’s appeared in my dreams and told me as such,” he grouses.

“And she’ll be prepared for you. Now that you’ve taken Lindum, and if you go for Corinium, Londinium be ready for you. She won’t be as easy to beat as Lindum, either – don’t forget, she was Capital before they gave you the title. The Cities in the South… the majority of them have sworn fealty to her. They might try to sabotage you, if you’re not careful.”

“What about you? Have you sworn fealty to one of the Capitals?”

She smiles, but it’s not a smile like his; not full of teeth and challenge and bloodlust but warm and soothing and indulgent.

“I don’t play by anybody else’s rules, brother. I won’t swear fealty to any City, or any King, or anybody but myself.”

She stands carefully, resting one hand on his shoulder, and he stretches, his muscles and joints still sore from absorbing all of the power from Lindum’s Capitalhood.

“Rest well. When you are strong again, I will take you to hunt in the forests.”

She closes the door with a gentle click and he leans back in his chair, watching the flames dance.

**

His hammer is too big now for it to live on his belt, no longer a comforting weight against his thigh – instead he straps it across his back, mindful of the spike that has grown out of the back of it.

Nottingham gives him a spear to hunt with and a new horse to borrow, and as they make their way through the forest, she tells him of Artemis (not Diana, she was too detached from her people but _Artemis_ who was wild and barefoot and ran through the trees), of what she’s learnt from her brief time being occupied by the Romans. They exchange stories for hours, only half-interested in the deer that they’re pursuing, until Nottingham suddenly leans towards him, ferocious and untamed and her eyes shining silver.

“Now _hunt_ ,” she whispers, and they set off with purpose through the trees.

They work together that evening to strip the skin from the deer and drags its guts out into a nearby alleyway, leaving them for some wild cats or homeless people to feast on. Eboracum keeps the antlers, though – it was a young buck that they killed and its antlers are fairly small, but Nottingham tells him that she knows a man who can make trinkets from the bone.

**

He leaves Nottingham with a new horse and tack, new clothes, a white ring made from antler bone, and renewed strength in his body. It’s a much longer journey that he’s had before but he takes his time, more confident and sure of himself now than he ever has been before. Perhaps there is something in his bearing, he thinks, as the inns that he stops at each night cater to his every desire. Perhaps now the humans can feel his power, even if they’re not quite sure what’s causing it and don’t really know who he is.

When he arrives at Corinium, it is not at all what he expects. The people wave at him in the streets and he tries to glare at him from his mare but they just smile back at him, entirely unfazed. He’s barely ridden a few thousand yards before a man dressed resplendently in dark blue robes approaches him, taking the reins of his mare in one hand and offered him a goblet of ale with the other.

He tells him that Corinium is waiting for him.

And he is – the City is lounging in his trinclinium, in what appears to be the most opulent part of the city, in a pristine toga with a deep purple cloak, and the sight of him make Eboracum glance down at his own, more practical clothing, with something akin to embarrassment.

“I never wanted it, you know,” Corinium says conversationally, standing to his feet and walking across the mosaic floor to him. “They just declared me a Capital. But I don’t have the stomach for it; I never have. I’d rather be left in peace and have what’s left of my people live in peace. That is what you’ve come for, isn’t it? I did wonder who would be the first to come for me.”

Eboracum opens and closes his mouth a few times in shock before eventually responding, clearing his throat awkwardly.

“Yes. Yes, I’ve come to claim my Capitalhood.”

“And I surrender it willingly,” he says with a genial smile ( _kind and warm and not like Eboracum’s, never like his_ ), arms open and welcoming him to the city. “Take my Capitalhood, and let us dine together.”

**

Corinium is a city of the arts, and the City himself loves to partake in them. He shows Eboracum his basilica, tells him that it is the envy of the south and only the one at Londinium can rival it. He takes him to his races, and Eboracum has to admit that the forum is magnificent. The amphitheatre, too – Corinium tells him proudly that it can seat thousands upon thousands, and over the course of his stay, encourages him to attend the bull-baiting and gladiator fights that are on offer.

He teaches him how to make mosaics. Eboracum protests – Corinium might still be occupied but it can’t be denied that the Romans are withdrawing from the country, and his dwindling population is testament to that, but Corinium is adamant that he will pass on the skill.

He takes him to smiths, and here Eboracum lights up – it’s been decades now since he worked the forges of Sheffield, and his hands are eager to mould metal. But when he takes up the iron he finds that all of the dexterity and cleverness of his hands has gone; the hammer that he picks up strikes poorly, the material doesn’t sing, and the fires hiss at him.

Sheffield was right, he thinks as he twists his jet ring around his finger. He is far better suited now to killing than creating.

**

He leaves Corinium stronger for taking his Capitalhood, but feeling more jaded and tired than before. The journey is no further than it had been from Nottingham but every step that his horse takes makes him weary and unsure and the drums, the ever-present drums, keep him awake at night.

The days pass slowly as he constantly rides towards the sun. The towns and inns that he rests at are friendly enough, but as with the people of Lindum, they seem to sense that something is amiss – that he is the harbinger of doom, maybe. They are pleasant but they keep their distance; none offer to share a meal with him, or offer to exchange stories.

On his fourth day of travelling, he sells his chestnut mare for a barrel of wine, in the hopes that he will finally be able to drink himself into dreams.

And the dreams come, thick and fast. They flash before him too fast to see properly, but they are all of them violent, filled with swords and axes and Londinium appears, too, painted for war. There are roses and jet and a glimpse of fire and stone upon stone, buildings leaning into each other and people reaching across the gaps in his streets. The images change, but they are atinted in blood and water and chanting in the deep.

**

He sleeps at last that night, but when he wakes, he wishes that he hadn’t.

He can barely stand and when he does, it’s on unsteady feet. He immediately regrets selling his horse; at least then he could have mustered his strength on the road whilst she did his walking for him.

But he presses on, towards the drums. People walking past him who were previously friendly now stare in horror as he lurches at the side of the road, warhammer dragging him down and sword clunking dully against his leg. He could flag somebody down, he thinks. Reveal his identity, promise them riches beyond measure if they would sell him their mount, or let him ride in their cart… but the idea passes out of his mind as quickly as it comes, his consciousness too fractured to hold onto the thought.

_Is this was going mad feels like?_ he wonders as he stumbles on, shielding his eyes from the light ahead of him. Soldiering on through absolute misery to face his ultimate foe, unable to focus on anything but the packed ground beneath his feet. He thinks that he might have bumped into a few, or more, people on the road but he can’t remember.

He can hear nothing but the drums; he vision vibrates with the thundering and his legs shake, and his warhammer is so heavy on his back that every step forward is a struggle. He manages another five yards before falling to his knees; ten more crawling, and then can go no further, and he lies on the ground, wheezing. He listens to the drums – he has no choice – and his body feels torn in two, pulled inexorably towards them but desperately wanting to run as far away as his tired body will take him.

“You’ll lose if you go up against her like that,” says a voice above him, hours or maybe days later, and his pushes through the pain behind his eyes to look up at the woman who is silhouetted by the sun, high in the sky above him. “You took the others, didn’t you?”

“Lindum… and Corinium… yes.”

“And even having absorbed their power, you are still weak. Go home,” she says, and stands up straight, adjusting her armour and pulling her long, black hair away from her face. “I will take her first; come back in a few centuries, if you’re ready.”

She mounts her horse without another word or backward glance, and rides away in a cloud of dust. The drums fade like her stallion’s hoofbeats and with it, the pain, until he simply lies on the ground and tries to catch his breath. He wonders, briefly, why she didn’t simply kill him herself – it would have been one less contender in the War, and an easy victory at that. The niggling idea that she didn’t even consider him a threat, and rather found it useful that he had already killed the others as a favour to her, worms its way into the back of his mind.

He stands slowly and brushes himself down. The War is by no means over, but for now, with the drums quiescent for a short time, he can perhaps return to his homelands.

Besides which, his name is beginning to sound foreign to him. He is losing the connection to Eboracum, and whilst he had originally thought that it was just from being away from his lands for so long, he can feel the real reason now, tingling in his fingertips.

He is turning into Eoforwic. The Saxons are coming.

 

**

 

 

(tbc)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eoforwic enjoys the growth that the Anglo Saxons bring.

**

Eoforwic enjoys the growth that the Anglo Saxons bring. They aren’t interested in fighting – instead they come to the city peacefully and upon finding it deserted, immediately set themselves to rebuilding what the Romans left behind and improving upon it.

He sits back and watches from his new home outside the old Roman walls, closer to the confluence of the Foss and Ouse, immersing himself amongst the academics and artists. It’s a good place to watch the ships slide past on their way to port, carrying goods from all across the kingdom to trade in the main town. The city is growing in wealth and skill – the smiths have diversified and now work with copper and brass, and the leather merchants slowly spread out amongst the streets.

As the city flourishes, the boundaries of the old kingdoms shift and change, and he learns that the city is now within the bounds of a kingdom called Deira. He wines and dines King Aella, lets slip secrets and stories and works his way through the royal household until Edwin calls him _brother_ , calls him _my Eoforwic_ , and he discovers the name of a small City not even twenty miles outside his walls.

He returns for dinner one night with blood dripping from his warhammer, and by the time that the boar carcass is taken away and thrown to the dogs, Eoforwic finds himself the Capital of Deira.

**

Many decades later, Eoforwic wakes to the sound of gentle drums; a rhythmic rumble deep behind his teeth, rumbling in his ears and down his spine. He lies in bed for a long while, twisting his jet and antler rings around his fingers, until finally climbing out of bed and stepping out into the howling wind.

There is a young boy standing outside his house, shivering in the cold, holding a dagger loosely in his hand. Eoforwic immediately brings his warhammer over his shoulder and he sees the boy’s eyes widen, and his mouth open and close in fear.

“I would warn you not to challenge me, boy,” Eoforwic snarls, and the boy takes an uncertain step forward, holding both is dagger and free hand up in supplication.

“I am Bamburgh, and I have come to surrender my right to Capital,” he stammers, half from cold and half from terror. “I have no wish to fight you for it.”

Eoforwic can do nothing but stare at him in surprise, but the boy’s statement is proved by the rush of strength that rushes into his shoulders and back, lengthening his spine. The boy – Bamburgh – seems visibly relieved by the transfer, and slowly sheaths his dagger.

“Come inside, where it’s warmer,” Eoforwic says eventually, and Bamburgh nearly trips over his own feet in his haste to pass through the door.

**

“I didn’t even realise that you were a City,” Eoforwic admits as he hunts some bread from the cupboard. “I usually notice, but not with you.”

“They declared me their Capital when they made Bernicia,” Bamburgh says with a scowl, and takes the hunk of bread that’s offered to him. “I’m not even a City, not really. I have a castle – and it’s beautiful, it really is, you’re welcome to visit any time – but I knew that they’d made a mistake. I’ve had to put up with that lot posturing about my grandeur for nearly two centuries! Honestly, I got so sick of it that I ran away, and that must be why it went into decline. I felt it though, this morning, when they declared Bernicia and Deira the United Kingdom of Northumbria.”

“Yes, Aethelfrith has been talking about it for a while, ever since he took the crown of Bernicia.”

“And I knew that I had to come to surrender to you,” he continues, poking at the dried fish that Eoforwic has provided. “I had no interest in ever being a Capital and certainly no intention of challenging you for it, believe me!”

Eoforwic watches this young boy carefully as he cuts into his fish. His people must surely have known that Bamburgh was not destined for greatness – his body is too slender, his eyes too wide, and his heart too kind. He doesn’t have the raw brute strength of Eoforwic, the thirst for blood, or bared rows of shining white teeth.

**

The Anglo Saxons bring with them a new religion, one that his beloved Constantine spoke of and toyed with but never really committed to until he left Eboracum behind. Eoforwic watches them build churches and worship their one God, and smiles – his own gods are the old gods, nameless deities that flow through earth and tree and stone and smile down at him from faces in the bark, whisper around his ankles as he stands in his rivers – and he will not change that, but he will accept this new offering of religion.

Christianity spreads when King Edwin converts, at the behest of his new wife. Eoforwic attends the wedding along with the royal officials, and as they say their oaths, he sees the woman from his dreams gently moving her way through the crowds. His rings tighten on his fingers as she approaches, hair long and wild and vibrant, and he can’t even move as she leans up and kisses him. But he blinks, and she’s gone and his King has a wife.

They build a small wooden church for the wedding and then the following day, tear it down and begin rebuilding it again in stone, bigger and more impressive than anything that any of his people have ever seen and when Eoforwic gazes at it in the fading twilight, he can see the colours twisting and turning through glass that it still waiting to be made.

**

He’s sat down by the river when she comes, quietly alternating between adding braids to his hair and sharpening his axe. There’s a shout from the water and he looks up to see a small boat coming towards him, with a young girl rowing enthusiastically. He spent enough time with Bamburgh to recognise a young, small City this time, and he matches her smile as she pulls up to the bank beside him.

“Hi,” she says breathlessly as she climbs from the boat, stumbling slightly before straightening and pushing her black hair from her eyes. “You’re Eoforwic, aren’t you?”

“I am,” he says mildly, and her smile simply widens, and she settles down on the grass beside him.

“I’m Inhyrpum,” she explains, leaning towards him. “I sailed down the Ouse to come to you. Well actually it’s called the Ure up by my city, but they join together. I would have ridden down – if you could see the horses that we have, you’d be jealous – but sometimes, I find it nice just to sail down the river. It can be a lot calmer.”

“You’re going to have a hard time going back up-river by yourself.”

“Oh, I have a good relationship with the river, I’m sure if I’ll be able to ask for assistance. Obviously not as strong as yours – you and the river both owe each other a lot – but it’ll make things easier, I’m sure.”

Inhyrpum falls silent with a sigh, looking across the river to where new houses have sprung up where the old colonia used to be, fresh and free of the silt that smothered most of Eboracum when the floods came. Eoforwic looks at her closely – at the slim lines of her arms, the freckles spattered across her shoulders and nose, the bow and quiver slung over her shoulder.

“You’re young, aren’t you?” he asks and she nods, squinting slightly in the sunlight.

“Yes, and I fear that I’ll stay that way,” she admits slowly. “I dream of fire far too often.”

He watches her for a moment, and something affectionate blossoms in his chest – something that he hasn’t felt since he left the gates of Sheffield many centuries ago. He realises that perhaps this young girl, this City from the river, is his newest sister.

“If you think that fire is coming, call for me. The river will hasten me to you.”

She turns sharply to look at him, clearly startled by the offer. For a City – a Capital, no less – to volunteer to walk towards fire that isn’t aimed at him is tantamount to a sacrifice, and she quite obviously wasn’t expecting the show of guardianship and generosity.

“I couldn’t ask that of you.”

“You’re not asking, I’m offering. I am your brother, your Capital and king. It would be… remiss of me, to allow you to succumb to flames and refuse to offer aid.”

She stares at him – dark blue eyes meeting his – before eventually looking back out across the river. They sit in silence until the sun sets.

**

He sees amber in his dreams.

Amber and blood and bone and wood, all drifting up the river and crawling across the land and into toward city. He follows them but they don’t roll towards the market place but instead outside the walls, to where there is currently nothing but a few small houses. He watches as they sink into the dark ground, which begins to rumble beneath his feet; the rumble of boots thundering on stone, the rumble of a march, the rumble of war. He can hear chanting but it’s not in any language that he knows, and a sudden tightening on his bicep makes him look down; a golden arm ring has appeared on his skin. He looks up to the north and in the pale glow of the moonlight, the walls ahead of him crumble and fall, crashing down the hill towards him as an enormous flock of ravens flies overhead, blocking out the moon until everything is completely black and all he can hear is the crashing stone.

He wakes suddenly, sweating and trembling and gasping for breath. The young woman that he took into his bed the previous night stirs at his waking but he quietens her with his hand on the back of her shoulder blades, easing her back into sleep. She doesn’t know that he’s Eoforwic and he hasn’t the will to explain the nightmare to her.

If it were a City beside him, he might wake them and tell them his dreams, and they would understand and tell him that there is nothing that he can do to stop progress, to halt what has to happen to bring him into greatness. But how can he explain to one of his people that they are soon going to be invaded?

**

 The church that they have built on the place where Edwin was married is maginificent. The original burnt down in a fire that terrified Eoforwic, had him smearing salves onto his burnt chest for days afterward, but the cathedral that they have rebuilt in its place is enormous. There are thirty altars and soaring, vaulted ceilings, long halls with shining wooden pews. The Christians have far more rituals and worship sessions that Eoforwic would have ever thought imaginable – but then his old gods require nothing but respect, nothing like the self-sacrifice that their God seems to request from them – and whilst he sometimes loses count, he tries to attend the most important ones, to see how his people live their lives.

It is during one of their rituals, on All Saints Day, that the ravens come.

**

The Vikings take the city easily; the warring kings of Bernicia and Deira combine forces briefly in an attempt to retake the Northumbrian Capital but the Danes are too strong, too bloodthirsty, too wild to be controlled. The Great Heathen Army has taken the North, they whisper in the streets. This shall be our Kingdom.

He feels invigorated, refreshed, reawakened. Something stirs within him that he hasn’t felt in a very, very long time – something primal and fierce and terrifyingly strong, and his warhammer lengthens in the spring that the Northumbrians try to take the city back.

They were never his people, Jorvik thinks, and he grins as the royal court flees north back to Bernicia, and he smiles with blood-stained teeth and wild, river-green eyes as he is declared the King in the North.

**

 

 

 

(tbc)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, Jorvik thinks. I have found my people.

**

These are his people.

Jorvik has never felt as alive, as wired and kinetic as he does now. The Vikings come filled with enthusiasm and a violent lust for life that sings to him, that makes him smile with every step as he walks down the filthy, crowded, bustling streets. As his dream predicted, the Vikings move the centre of commerce out of the walls (and when they rip them all down he is bedridden for two full days before they began to rebuild him, and he grows even taller) and towards the east, to a street that they name Coppergate, and they fill it with industries – making wooden cups and bowls, metalworking, jewellery.

The people fill him with life and they reap it back from him as a City. They thrive together; for the first time in millennia, Jorvik connects with his people. He accompanies them on raids into Mercia, and the pounding of the blood through his veins is enough to drown out the drums that grow louder with every step south; when they make camp he laughs uproariously with his men and helps skin the deer and shares their ale until they all collapse under the stars. They tell him of their gods, and he finds that he prefers them to the Christian God that the Saxons brought to him; more in line with his own, ancient ones.

When they return to the city in between raids, Jorvik wanders the streets and takes deep breaths, fills himself with the stench of his people and revels in it. He sits on stool in front of houses and the children braid beads of bone and amber into his partially-shaved hair, and the ground that season is more fertile than ever. He learns their crafts, remembers how to fish, and how to sail a boat. As the century turns, he takes it to the river and prays to the water beneath him to hasten him upstream, and Inhyrpum was right; he moves swiftly against the flow and northward to his little sister, who is prospering just as much in the newly-established Danelaw.

Some of the men that he regularly raids with help him build his new home – a splendid, two-storey building by the riverside, with a ground of packed earth and solid beams to support the roof. When it’s finished they drink and eat and toast the gods, and Jorvik thinks _yes, these are my people_.

**

They raid west and stay away from the city for several months. They return unsuccessful but exhilarated nonetheless – there’s blood caked into their hair and mud spattered up their legs, and the excursions are as much about the thrill of the fight than the actual victory.

Jorvik barely notices them approaching the newly-built city walls over the sound of raucous laughter – they started their march at dawn and it’s nearly noon, and he’s looking forward to buying some fresh fish on the market for his dinner. He also has a pair of enormous deer antler that he intends to mount on his door. His people greet them cheerfully as they return; all that they’ve brought back is loot, rather than conquest, but Jorvik is fairly confident that the king won’t mind too much.

He stops short though, when he reaches his house; the front door is slightly ajar, creaking ominously in the wind. He pauses for a moment outside, listening carefully and pulling his hammer in front of himself. The house is silent but he can sense a presence, and his grip tightens on his hammer.

“Come inside, darling. The fire’s lit.”

He nearly drops his hammer in surprise, and shoves the door open, and there she is – the woman that haunts his dreams most nights, whom he sees flitting between trees in the woods, who’s gone in the space that it take him to draw breath, lying on his bed. The firelight glints off her hair, making it a dark, dark red colour – and it’s long, longer than he’d dreamt, but just as wild. She watches him with bright intelligent blue eyes as he skirts the edge of his house, slowly pulling his pack from his shoulder and laying it on the ground. She tilts her head and watches him with a sort of fond amusement as he fumbles with his cloak and struggles to hang it.

“Who are you?” he manages after staring at her for a while, and her smile grows (a dangerous smile, but a cunning smile, not all teeth and blood like his).

“Who do you think I am?”

“ _Kona_ ,” he blurts out and even though the word takes him completely by surprise, he knows somehow that he’s right. She just smiles, and smiles and smiles and beckons him over to the bed, and he’s powerless to resist.

**

 

 

 

**

Lancaster stays with him and comes to love the city and its people. She tells him that she’d begun to drift away from her own, and so took to wandering in the hope that it would remind her of her love for them. She says that the Norsemen have come across to her as well, but they haven’t created the grand settlement that they have here.

Her constant presence causes Jorvik to be constantly smiling, and for once, his teeth aren’t bared. They fight, regularly and viciously, but they always come back to each other; it’s not like any relationship that he has with any of the other Cities that he knows, and that stirs something feral in him. They haven’t spoken about his declaration, about _kona_ , and Jorvik senses that they won’t for some time. On the lazy summer mornings they lie in bed and talk quietly and by lunch they will have beaten each other bloody and it’s good, whilst it’s lasting, but it won’t last. He knows that she will be leaving soon.

But for as long as she’s here with him, the city itself benefits. With Jorvik now more grounded, the people lose their urge to raid; instead they concentrate on expanding their families and crafts, improving trade from countries across the sea.

He makes a gold arm ring for Lancaster – thin and braided, shining brightly. She takes it and then takes the jet ring from his right hand, and slides it onto her thumb, where it fits snugly.

“Sheffield remade that when I visited him, after the Romans left,” he explains, and she turns it around her thumb to inspect it in the firelight. “Etched the pattern on the outside. It was better than the original one, though I will admit that I used to be a good smith before I started bludgeoning people over the head.”

She grins, and peers closer at the metal.

“The pattern is roses,” she says eventually, and kisses him.

**

They test themselves on each other. Constant experiments, to see how far each one can be wounded before they start to heal. They chase each other through the nearby forests armed with bows, dragging each other’s corpses through the streets to heal back at home, much to the horror of his people. His limits are far higher, as a Capital – he heals faster, and stronger than Lancaster, but every time she reawakens it’s with eyes bright and ready for another round.

She tries to drown him, once. The fact that he can recover doesn’t even occur to him and he reacts immediately, crushing her skull like a rotten egg with one tremendous blow.

It takes her nearly a week to revive, and he keeps watch the whole time. As soon as her eyes open she growls and grabs at the nearest dagger, launching herself at him, but he restrains her gently and shows her his legs – legs that he’s kept hidden from her for years, legs that nobody else has seen since he was in Lindum.

She calms and traces the sallow green tint of his skin, the edges where it merges back into his normal skin tone. It’s been so long that he would even look at his own legs that he hasn’t noticed the slow creep – where the line was once only halfway up his calves it’s just over his knees; the spreading is slow, but continuous.

“Did your people die?” she asks quietly and his shakes his head, clearing his throat.

“No, I warned them in time. It was the Romans,” he says with a wry smile. “They evacuated and took everything and left me completely alone. That’s when I went to fight for my Capitalhood.”

“Whilst there weren’t even any people to support you?” she asks in surprise, eyebrows shooting up, and he grins smugly.

“Without support. I tried to go for Londinium but for that, I will need my people behind me. I’ll face her soon, I think. These people fortify my and with at my side, I can kill her. Provided you don’t stab me in the neck first,” he concedes, but she shakes her head, hands still laid on his legs.

“Didn’t you hear? Lundenwic isn’t a Capital anymore. Wintanceastre took it from her.”

He starts, and then smiles with his teeth.

“I met her on the road, as I became Eoforwic,” he admits slowly, with a sudden flashback of lying on the side of the road, unable to see or hear anything. “I couldn’t even stand up and she came riding past me, telling me to go home and come back when I was ready. I guess she killed her then.”

“She didn’t burn her though – Lundenwic is still alive, just dormant. I don’t think she’s given up but the Vikings were rough with her. I’m not sure if they settled, or just plundered and rested for a short time within her walls.”

“I’ll burn her when I take her,” he promises, taking Lancaster’s hands in his own, the metal of his jet ring warmed by her thumb. “I will raze her to the ground and all other Cities will think twice, thrice, a thousand times before trying to start another Silent War, and you’ll be beside me when I take her and the drums will finally stop.”

She looks at him closely and she smiles, but it’s a sad one.

“No, I won’t,” she sighs, and lets go of his hands. “And neither will you. Because something is coming.”

**

He sees the body when he’s out fishing in the river, setting the net in one of his favourite spots. The body comes drifting slowly towards him; he guesses from a distance that it’s a woman, judging by her long black hair, and she’s face-down. As she approaches, he collects his hammer from the shore and wades in as far as he dare before the current becomes too strong, and uses the spike on the back of the hammer head to hook her in and pull her towards him.

That’s when he sees the burnt skin, raw and peeling and bloodied, all down the backs of her arms and the tops of her shoulders; what he’d originally assumed was a poor girl drowning looks to be something more sinister. He drags her back towards the shore, trying not to touch the skin on her back. It’s not until he has her on the muddy ground at the water’s edge and turns her over that he sees her face, and he is violently sick into the murky water.

Inhyrpum’s face, young and freckled, looks up at him with wide eyes.

**

“You were right,” he says quietly to Lancaster after they bury Inhyrpum’s body at the point where the rivers meet, rain pouring in sheets around them. “Something is coming, and you need to go home. I won’t risk you for whatever it is.”

“Have you dreamt of fire?” she whispers, her hand clutching his tightly, and he shakes his head. It’s not fire that he dreams of; it never has been.

“No,” he says, and his voice cracks. “I dream of water.”

**

He resists it, when they come. All previous times he’s sat back and allowed progress but this time, these are _his people_ , and he will not go down easily. He leaves his hammer on his hearth though, instead fighting with an axe and a sword that Lancaster had helped him forge decades ago. They don’t fit in his hands as comfortably, don’t sing in the same way, but at least they don’t bring the same flood of guilt with every swing.

But it’s not enough. He’s been complacent for too long, too settled, that his people have lost their ferocity and bloodlust. They last for many weeks but eventually, the king is forced from the city, and the Anglo Saxons retake control of the city.

They say that he is no longer the King of the North, that his kingdom has been merged into the whole country, that they are now part of England.

He slits their throats in the night and his people whisper _Jorvik_ in their dreams.

**

He drifts for years.

His begins to lose his connection to his people. The Vikings that have stayed see him as Jorvik the indomitable, the fearsome, the smiling. The Saxons that return see him as a bastardised Eoforwic, made feral and violent by the Norsemen. And as the years pass, the two groups of people start to merge, and Jorvik struggles to reconcile the City that the Saxons remember him to be with the City that the Vikings moulded him into.

It doesn’t help that every time he tries to sleep, Inhyrpum’s face drifts towards him out of the water, down from the dark and the chanting.

**

He writes to Lancaster, but she is pre-occupied. She only sends him one reply:

                _Something is coming for me too. Dream of me. -L_

**

Despite Jorvik’s floundering, the city begins to thrive. The Saxons begin construction where the Vikings were too lazy and drunk to continue – they strengthen the walls again, and Jorvik leaves his house for the first time in weeks. They start building churches, too – one within the land of the old colonia, on the exact spot where Eboracum had first lived, and one just to the north-west of the original walls. There’s still a separation with religion – the remaining Vikings are curious about Christianity but he’s seen one of them be baptised, and the poor man’s friends thought that the whole process was both ridiculous and hilarious.

The city swells with people. Jorvik was always crowded but now, they have no choice but to expand outward, and fast. The building trade flourishes and the ever-growing city draws in even more trade. Jorvik wants to be happy, he wants to help his people thrive, but his heart’s not in it. It was shattered when he failed to protect his little sister and even though he’s tried to put it back together, he knows that parts of it travelled back across the country with Lancaster.

He no longer has a king, either. After his gentle Edgar died, the Saxons began appointing earls to keep hold of the city (not a kingdom, not anymore, that’s been taken from him) and whilst Jorvik makes himself known to them all, none of them inspire him. They’re Nordic and they are pleasant, but they don’t have the same fire that Halfdan Ragnarsson did, still thirsting for bloody revenge for his father’s death. He can’t even remember how many times Halfdan told him the story of his glorious father, the powerful Viking king Ragnar Lodbrok who raided and pillaged everything that he saw, only to be defeated by King Aelle.

And so he begins to settle, detached but calm. The city is peaceful and for now, he can’t complain, but something is still there at the back of his mind. Something is coming, and soon, and it's marching to the beat of a drum.

**

The Normans are vicious in their invasion of the country. The other Cities that he knows send him letters, keeping him updated; they know that he’s worried, that he wants to be prepared.

The King of England dies, and the Vikings return. They come in force to take Jorvik back; they come to take the throne and they kill the Earls of Northumbria and Mercia to do it because to them, Jorvik is the King, he is their Capital, he is where they need to be.

But they’re wrong. Jorvik tries to warn them, tries to tell them that even though he’s glad that they’re back that something’s coming, something that will end everything.

They don’t listen. They die at Stamford Bridge.

**

William steps foot onto English soil as Jorvik still mourns his kings.

**

The drums, the drums. Jorvik watches as the people of the North – his people, finally his people – refuse to bow to this new king, this William the Conqueror who would have the country throw themselves at his feet. A century ago he would bristle at the thought, he would take up his warhammer and march south to cave in his skull.

But now… all he wants to do is sleep. Lancaster sends him one letter, telling him that she is doing her part in the revolt, but she doesn’t think it’ll last. The earls are changing sides too quickly, there’s too much politics and back-stabbing and if they can’t stand together, they won’t stand at all.

William sends his armies to the North, to the heart of him, and all Jorvik can do is stand in a stupor as he feel his people dying – little stings that bite deeper and deeper, the closer that they come to his city. There is something coming.

**

Williams steps through the gates as the sun reaches its highest peak, on midsummer’s day. The city has fallen quiet. The months of harrying have left both the people and the City exhausted and strained, stretched too thin and chasing lost causes.

Jorvik is in King’s Square when the Conqueror marches on the city. The streets lean in and whisper to him – they say _he is coming_ , they say _she is here_. He could run; the drums are louder now than they’ve been in centuries, and he knows who _she_ is. His warhammer is heavy and holds him down on the stone bench when he tries to stand.

William is taller than he’d expected, with his fine grey hair and neat beard. He looks down at the people from his mount as he passes them, warily, as though he expects them to all start hurling weapons at him from the mud. But it’s a different fight that’s about to start. Those who were particularly intent on the rebellion fled with William’s approach and there is no governance now within the walls. Just a tired City, unable to stand.

She follows on a roan stallion behind her king. She’s exactly the same as when he first saw her in his dreams – small and wiry and blonde but fierce, so very fierce and cold. She sees him at the same moment and he can feel it, the thundering, the draw to battle. This is the woman with whom he’s been fighting for full Capitalhood ever since he was born, since before he even took Constantine the Great into his bed so many centuries ago.

He manages to stand, finally, as she dismounts and approaches him. The people have gathered around them; they know him well, and they knew Lancaster well enough to recognise another City. But they can’t feel her raw power the way that he can, can’t see the fire and passion and thirst that he can behind her eyes. Regardless, they know that something is going to happen. They know that something is coming.

“You killed Winchester, then,” he says, and she smiles, and it is full of teeth and so much like his own that a wave of nausea sweeps over him.

“She was an idiot not to burn me. She should have known that I would come for her.”

He looks at his people. And they _are_ his people, he knows that. They’re not the Romans or the Saxons, or even the Brigantes who started his birth. His Vikings might leave him but they will live forever in his streets.

“I wanted it so badly, when they first named me,” he admits, and he did. He scoured the land for centuries to kill his contenders. “The power of it fuelled me, gave me the strength to survive even when I was abandoned, when I had nobody but myself and my own will to survive.”

“It is mine,” she says coldly, and draws her sword. Her grip is sure and firm, unlike Lindum’s had been. She watches him carefully as he slowly draws his warhammer. It hasn’t grown recently, he realises. The leather grip is stained red with blood and the spike on the top is still sharp, could still pierce through a man’s skull. But the last time that he uses it was not to maim or kill somebody, he realises. It was to fish Inhyrpum’s burnt body from the Ouse. He glances once more at his Vikings, his people; at his ultimate strength.

“I surrender my claim to Capitalhood,” he says flatly, and drops his hammer to the ground. It doesn’t bounce but lands heavily in the mud.

There is silence for a moment.

“I’d thought that you, of all my contenders, would be the hardest to beat,” London eventually says in surprise, but he just shakes his head slowly, staring at his hammer.

“I’m tired of the fighting – I have what I need now. Take what’s yours. You’ve been waiting for it for centuries.”

He feels the strength that Capitalhood granted him leave his body in an instant; it winds him, leaves him gasping for breath and bent down on his knees, hands deep in the mud. He feels the loss keenly, the ache like a chasm ripped open inside his heart; the Romans left him when he became Eoforwic, the Saxons faded to memory when the Vikings came and made him a kingdom – and now, his Capitalhood has gone, but his people have filled the space of it, and he finally knows what it means to be a City. His arms shake trying to hold him up and his mind feel as though it’s been wiped clean but he is alive, _he is alive_ , and the drumming has finally stopped.

 “You’ve made a wise choice, Jorvik,” London says with a triumphant smile as she glows with the power of her full Capitalhood.

He looks up, and shakes his head.

“York. My name is York.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends the story of the making of York. I hope you enjoyed it!


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